London, (Samajweekly) Britain’s first female Sikh MP Preet Kaur Gill has said she was forced to contact police after receiving a threatening email message saying: “watch your back”.
The senior Labour MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston said that following the email, she is forced to keep a bodyguard at her constituency surgery meetings.
“It was very direct. It’s a worry because I’m with my daughters in the constituency all the time. My family live there. It really puts into context the kind of job that you do. It’s tough enough as it is, but then when you’re faced with that, there’s very little support. This latest direct threat has really worried and concerned me,” Gill told GB News on Saturday.
“As a woman, when you put yourself forward and you want to address injustices and you care about issues that affect your constituents, you’re then faced with people that think it’s okay to say this sort of stuff to you.”
Instead of using an alias, the threat was sent from a legitimate account with a genuine email address, which left Gill shocked.
“I could not believe that this person used their place of work email to actually make that threat,” Gill, who had been a target of hate campaigns in the past, said.
Gill has reported the incident to the West Midlands Police.
“Once you’ve raised it with the police, they’ve got to go away and do an investigation, but there’s no real understanding of the impact it has on you, your everyday work, the psychological impact, the kind of always looking behind your shoulder,” she told GB News.
Gill was recently accused of undermining victims of sexual abuse, according to a Guardian report.
The Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, had sent a series of WhatsApp messages on a group undermining allegations of sexual abuse within gurdwaras.
